This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. This series of interviews features Vikram Dendi, currently a Senior Product Manager for Incubation Business Strategy for Microsoft, who was a Product Manager for RealNetworks at the time of this interview.

If there were one interview that could somehow embody much of what the Digital Tipping Point video library and documentary project is all about, it would be Vikram Dendi. Vikram himself embodies many of the trends that the DTP project attempts to describe: the rising power of India based on disruptive innovations; the importance of a strong science curriculum in the US, particularly in the face of the rising power of India in the sciences and math; the flexibility of Free Open Source Software for launching businesses and individual careers; and the degree to which Microsoft acknowledges that its position as a market leader is being challenged by businesses deploying Free Open Source Software solutions such as GNU Linux.

Vikram talks both about his early life in India and his interest in science, as well as his later career trajectory and his success at RealNetworks due to his leadership with the Helix media shepherded at RealNetworks. He gives his perspective on the role of Free Open Source Software in accelerating the cultural and economic advancement of the developing world, but spends most of his time in this interview talking about RealNetworks' interest in using Free Open Source Software to position itself in the emerging Internet media market.

At the time of this series of interviews, Vikram worked for RealNetworks, a fact that makes his interview all the more interesting, in light of his subsequent move to Microsoft, where he has been consistently promoted and advanced. This interview is a rare glimpse into the perspective of a successful Microsoft executive who, at the time of this interview, presumably had no idea that he was going to be moving to Microsoft. In the Spring of 2008, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, the guy who will be stepping into the job that Bill Gates will leave in July 2008, said that Free Open Source Software poses a greater threat to Microsoft's business model than does arch-rival Google. As a result, Microsoft has brought on board many of the brightest minds from the Free Open Source Software community, and Vikram Dendi's move to Microsoft is probably an example of the extent to which Microsoft is trying to tap the ingenuity of the Free Open Source Software world.

If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeld@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at digitaltippingpoint.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_034

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 004, Vikram Dendi
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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